Bessent Says a 'Deranged Leftist' Tried to Assassinate Him. The New Republic's Response Draws Fire.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says someone tried to kill him shortly after he took office, and that the person responsible was, in his words, a "deranged leftist." That claim, first surfaced in reporting picked up by Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds, has reignited a running argument over political violence in America: who's doing it, who's excusing it, and who's keeping score.

No independent law enforcement statement, indictment, or court filing establishing the details of this alleged attempt on Bessent appears in the available reporting. Bessent's claim comes from his own account, relayed through commentary at The New Republic and amplified by conservative outlets. An allegation from the target of an alleged attack is not the same as a charged case with evidence entered into a record. Readers deserve to know this is Bessent's characterization, not a confirmed law enforcement finding as reported here.

What's drawn more attention than the alleged attempt itself is how The New Republic responded to it. According to Instapundit, TNR's reaction amounted to asking whether Bessent understood he was "forcing" the left to consider violence against him, a framing Reynolds calls a justification dressed up as concern. If that characterization of TNR's piece is accurate, it's a genuinely ugly editorial choice. Blaming a target for provoking his own alleged attempted murder is not commentary, it's an excuse with a byline.

The broader context deserves attention. TNR is a single left-leaning magazine, not the Democratic Party or the American left writ large. Plenty of Democrats have condemned political violence unambiguously, including after attacks on Republican officials in past years. Painting an entire political coalition with one magazine's editorial judgment would be its own kind of dishonesty.

Reynolds doesn't let that go unanswered either. He points out TNR has a history here: in 2013, under different ownership after Marty Peretz sold the outlet, the magazine ran commentary invoking Boris Yeltsin's 1993 shelling of the Russian White House as a model worth admiring, prompting National Review's Jim Geraghty to brand TNR "your first choice for violent, authoritarian, eliminationist rhetoric." Reynolds argues the current piece on Bessent shows "little has changed." That's a fair historical data point, not a smear, if the 2013 piece said what Reynolds says it said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also weighed into the broader debate, according to a National Review piece republished by PressBee, arguing the country is facing what he calls an "epidemic of left-wing violence and extortion." The specifics of Rubio's argument, what incidents he's citing and what data underlies the claim, aren't detailed in the available reporting beyond the headline framing. An "epidemic" is a strong word, and strong words need strong evidence attached, not just a headline.

Separately, and in a story that's drawn its own backlash, Emma Vigeland, a former Young Turks correspondent who now co-hosts The Majority Report with Sam Seder, said on a Vox podcast this month that she isn't bothered by the idea of a progressive politician harboring what she called "secret Nazi" views, so long as that politician votes the right way. Vigeland's comment came in the context of discussing the political collapse of Maine oysterman and Senate candidate Graham Platner. "I don't really care if say like Bernie Sanders or AOC go home and they're a secret Nazi, but they go out and they vote for the right things," Vigeland said, according to the source material. Neither Sanders nor Ocasio-Cortez has been accused of anything of the sort. Vigeland was speaking hypothetically about prioritizing platform over character.

Taken alone, Vigeland's comment is a bad soundbite about political tribalism, the kind partisans on both sides make when arguing that policy outcomes matter more than a candidate's personal history. Taken together with TNR's Bessent commentary, conservative commentators are using both to argue the left has a tolerance problem for extremism in its own ranks, whether that's excusing an alleged assassination attempt or shrugging off Nazi sympathies for the sake of votes.

What's missing from this entire exchange is anything close to a neutral accounting. No outlet in this set has published a law enforcement timeline of the alleged Bessent attack, no charges have been reported, and no on-record TNR statement responding to the backlash appears in available reporting. Until an actual case file, indictment, or official statement surfaces, this remains a fight over framing and rhetoric, not an adjudicated fact pattern. The open question is whether Bessent's Treasury Department or the Secret Service will confirm or detail the alleged incident publicly, and whether The New Republic will clarify or walk back the framing Reynolds and others have criticized.